This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
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Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
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On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Based on conversations on this site, and long roadtrips locked in the car for hours with friends I met on this site, I belatedly wrote this article. I'm unfamiliar with the rules for advertising substack on The Motte so please forgive me if this crosses a line or is the wrong method, but I thought I would share this back with everyone here. My thesis is that Donald Trump is the greatest man alive and is right about everything and we're all lesser and wrong, but that's ok, because he's going to teach us how to win. Please tell me how much you dislike it, and disagree with me, and believe I'm wrong about everything.
Many of you probably may remember a great old alternative to this place known as /r/CultureWarRoundup on Reddit. Due to its superior (which is by no means to say perfect), more "hands-off" moderation philosophy, it peeled off a good portion of the most intelligent people from here at one point (some of whom like me have returned a bit at least for the moment, many of whom probably did not) and was quickly gaining momentum, peaking at around 500 - 700 (IIRC, writing off the top of my head about all of this) replies per week to its main CWR thread while this place (back when it was on Reddit) at least once fell below 1K (or at least close to it) replies (again, IIRC) to the same (less than the activity now for the most part, as the moderation here's somewhat toned down its scattershot executions since then, not enough and not half as much as at the beginning of this site when they were trying to attract people by pretending to have reformed more comprehensively, but still somewhat, since those dark days of Hlynka (though a certain Amadan seems to relish the idea of bringing them back at least in part)). The people were speaking, and it wasn't looking good for this place, with the tides firmly turning in CWR's favor, but unfortunately, as jannies often do, CWR's own jannies started making their own very dumb decisions.
As Reddit started cracking down harder on wrongthink, stiffening new account requirements, shadowbanning more accounts without even pretending to respond to appeals from users that they aren't spambots (since of course that's never been the actual only or even main purpose of shadowbanning anyway), and in general making the site more of a pain to use, resulting in many of CWR's regular users getting banned from Reddit as a whole frequently (mostly only if they posted outside of /r/CWR (which most people did sometimes of course), yet occasionally even if not, as /r/CWR itself did suffer a few Reddit admin removals despite being mostly too small of a fish to worry about), exhausting their alt accounts, and finding it harder to make new ones/use the site effectively at all, CWR's jannies still doubled down on sticking with the platform in general, even raising new account length/"karma" requirements to post on the sub (and refusing to waive them for the new accounts of obvious regulars, which I know because I asked multiple times), perhaps due to paranoia about /r/SneerClub type infiltrators intentionally posting vastly incendiary/ToS-violating things to try to get them banned from Reddit (a concern I don't think ever actually materialized, whereas cutting off the earnest posters who actually wanted to post there but literally couldn't did). The great momentum they'd shown in overtaking this place began to crater as their regular users of the sub like me simply disappeared, unable to post because of the restrictions they foolishly chose to enforce in tandem with the Reddit admins in the hopes of avoiding the subreddit ban guillotine (which they've succeeded at so far... at the cost of their actual life anyway).
Though an eventual half-move to Saidit (which suffered from confusion as the Reddit sub stayed open as well, splitting the community, a mistake I do have to credit the mods here for not repeating after) restored some activity, it couldn't reignite the flame. Now both the still open Reddit and Saidit subs are in zombie mode. There was also a Matrix chatroom at some point, but the invite link to it seems to be entirely dead now (and of course nobody sensible wanted to move to a chatroom anyway which is not even close to the same medium).
So does anybody know what happened to these people? Where's the current venue for the continuation of SSC's CWR threads but with less of the crappy overbearing moderation you'll find increasingly more here (much like /r/TheSchism is an alternative but with even worse, crappier/more overbearing moderation)? Where can actual men engage in unrestricted intellectual discussion in a truly properly masculine fashion without effeminate finger-wagging jannies from California all too frequently interfering to whine about "antagonism" (the very essence of the competition of ideas, and therefore impossible to ban from it) or whatever as they do here (again, not as bad as in the past, but still too much)? Any and all info is appreciated. Thank you in advance.
There has been a lot of CW discussion on climate change. This is an article written by someone that used to strongly believe in anthropogenic global warming and then looked at all the evidence before arriving at a different conclusion. The articles goes through what they did.
I thought a top-level submission would be more interesting as climate change is such a hot button topic and it would be good to have a top-level spot to discuss it for now. I have informed the author of this submission; they said they will drop by and engage with the comments here!
It's an essay about the various flaws modern feminist sex positivity culture has for women, and that it's often a good idea to refrain from sex even if one isn't religious. The author is an Only Fans model for context. I thought it did a great job laying out the downsides of ubiquitous sex.(Reposted because I accidentally linked to reddit instead of the original essay earlier).
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, and RSS.
In this episode, we talk about white nationalism.
Participants: Yassine, Walt Bismarck, TracingWoodgrains.
Links:
Why I'm no longer a White Nationalist (The Walt Right)
The Virulently Unapologetic Racism of "Anti-Racism" (Yassine Meskhout)
Hajnal Line (Wikipedia)
Fall In Line Parody Song (Walt Bismarck)
Richard Spencer's post-Charlottesville tirade (Twitter)
The Metapolitics of Black-White Conflict (The Walt Right)
America Has Black Nationalism, Not Balkanization (Richard Hanania)
Recorded 2024-04-13 | Uploaded 2024-04-14
Let's chat about the National Football League: This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-10-24 8:15PM Minnesota Vikings @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2024-10-27 1:00PM Atlanta Falcons @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Sun 2024-10-27 1:00PM Chicago Bears @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-10-27 1:00PM Indianapolis Colts @ Houston Texans
Sun 2024-10-27 1:00PM Arizona Cardinals @ Miami Dolphins
Sun 2024-10-27 1:00PM Green Bay Packers @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 2024-10-27 1:00PM New York Jets @ New England Patriots
Sun 2024-10-27 1:00PM Tennessee Titans @ Detroit Lions
Sun 2024-10-27 1:00PM Baltimore Ravens @ Cleveland Browns
Sun 2024-10-27 4:05PM Buffalo Bills @ Seattle Seahawks
Sun 2024-10-27 4:05PM New Orleans Saints @ Los Angeles Chargers
Sun 2024-10-27 4:25PM Carolina Panthers @ Denver Broncos
Sun 2024-10-27 4:25PM Kansas City Chiefs @ Las Vegas Raiders
Sun 2024-10-27 4:25PM Philadelphia Eagles @ Cincinnati Bengals
Sun 2024-10-27 8:20PM Dallas Cowboys @ San Francisco 49ers
Mon 2024-10-28 8:15PM New York Giants @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-10-17 8:15PM Denver Broncos @ New Orleans Saints
Sun 2024-10-20 9:30AM New England Patriots @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Cincinnati Bengals @ Cleveland Browns
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Detroit Lions @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Houston Texans @ Green Bay Packers
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Miami Dolphins @ Indianapolis Colts
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Tennessee Titans @ Buffalo Bills
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Philadelphia Eagles @ New York Giants
Sun 2024-10-20 1:00PM Seattle Seahawks @ Atlanta Falcons
Sun 2024-10-20 4:05PM Carolina Panthers @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-10-20 4:05PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2024-10-20 4:25PM Kansas City Chiefs @ San Francisco 49ers
Sun 2024-10-20 8:20PM New York Jets @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Mon 2024-10-21 8:15PM Baltimore Ravens @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Mon 2024-10-21 9:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Arizona Cardinals
Week 8 thread: https://www.themotte.org/post/1216/weekly-nfl-thread-week-8
This a post that started in response to the question posed by @Amadan in regards to what should be done about Hylnka, and my thoughts in regards to the parent post about the state of the Motte.
The state of the Motte
So I'm a relative newcomer to the space and only lurked on /r/themotte occasionally, so I don't have a strong opinion on Hlynka one way or the other. I don't like him, I don't hate him, because I don't really know him.
But if you believe banning Hlynka is a net negative, that goes to reason that maybe there are some aspects of the rules that need consideration taken into account. I'm going to give my naive take since I haven't seen anyone else really answer the question recently regarding what should be done.
Perhaps there is an optimal ratio of good posts to bad posts that get some leeway. Or put another way, you get a pass for every "x" amount of good posts. Let's start with an extreme example. If someone makes 100 AAQC contributions to 1 ban-worthy post, I personally would rather want them to be allowed to keep posting even if they make 50 ban-worthy posts. I think to a certain extent, the mods already do this by gut feeling, which is why they have been lenient with Hylnka for so long. But because the rules don't allow for this, they don't have a good enough justification to allow for it. In the end, they became a slave to the rules. That being said in my opinion, the rules are actually really lenient and flexible, and I have seen the mods be plenty lenient. A place like Reddit nowadays will just perma ban you, most bans here are for a day or a week.
The more often you post, the more likely it is that one of your posts will be inflammatory or say something that people don't like and report you for. It's not ideal for people to just post and then not respond to people's responses, otherwise it's not that different from posting an article from an outside source. The controversial ideas are the most exciting. It's why the culture war stuff is the most popular. But controversial ideas are the ones that generate the most heat. The person proposing or defending the controversial idea will have many, many people piling on them. It's not easy being on the defending on, even if you deserve it.
Conversations on forums and the internet are weird. Human beings don't engage in conversation like this in the real world. Expecting people to be civil 100% of the time is an unrealistic expectation, especially in a place where your ideas are constantly attacked and challenged. People argue politics with their own family all the time, and these discussions can get heated, but at the end of the day, they still get together to eat at the same table. If someone garners enough goodwill in the community and makes good contributions, does it not stand to reason that they should be given more leeway? Even in our courts, where no man is above the law, the punishment is often adjusted based on the circumstances of the crime. At the same time, a forum means you can take the time to formulate your thoughts before hitting "post". I've seen some posts where people say they wrote this long post, it somehow got deleted, and then they realized how angry/inappropriate/inflammatory they were being and thus were able to write something of higher quality instead.
Are man made for rules, or rules made for man? Do the rules today really serve both sides of the ideas proposed by this place? To optimize for light, and to minimize heat? The common sentiment I see is that currently the enforcing of the rules minimizes heat, but doesn't optimize for light.
How do the people who wanted Hylnka banned feel now that he's gone from space? Do they feel the motte better now or worse for it? Do you genuinely want to see all these long-time posters banned? Why? Is it because you think they are bad for the community? Why do you think that? Are you using the rules for a personal vendetta, or are you genuinely trying to help make the Motte a place where people with opposing viewpoints can come together to discuss ideas to seek the truth? If all the people with opposing viewpoints are banned, how can you achieve that?
You aren't obligated to respond to someone. If they attack you in the comments just block them so you don't have to read it. Should the average user really be concerned with how others might interpret someone's statement? If the concern is how other potential newcomers may feel about the community, is that a valid concern today? When @Armin asked about the state of the Motte, most people agreed it's stagnant or decaying. The newcomers are not really coming.
Where are the people with counterpoints?
For the time I have spent here, I don't think I got any serious challenge from someone across the political aisle from me. I have gotten a few people challenging my ideas which I am immensely grateful for since they helped find the flaws in my thinking, but if I look back on them those don't tackle my core set of beliefs and were over relatively minor things. The one person who I did challenge @guesswho never responded to my response to his ideas almost 4 months ago and he's been gone for a month now. In other words, I have yet to be challenged on my core fundamental beliefs. To be honest, part of me is scared to even have that debate. It's uncomfortable. I'm fairly certain I will take it personally. Maybe the rules make more sense in that kind of environment. But my feeling, and based on reading what a lot of other people have posted, is that environment is long gone. The rules were built for different populations.
Every once in a while you get people from the opposite side of the political aisle, call everyone here nazis/far-right in an inflammatory manner and they get banned. I think their general sentiment is correct, though - this place is currently filled with moderates and people on the right political, and very few on the left. When I make a low-effort comment that would align with the red-tribe, I get tons of upvotes. When I see someone from the opposite side make a high-effort comment, it gets many downvotes. Now upvotes and downvotes don't mean much regarding the truth or quality of the post, but they do reveal the general user sentiment response to it.
Every community is composed of several groups - the mods, the prolific posters, people who post occasionally, people who mostly just upvote/downvote, and the lurkers. Forget about the lurkers, their opinions don't matter. In my opinion, smaller communities like the Motte can exist mainly due to the relationship between the mods and the prolific posters. I don't mean to sound rude but the prolific posters are abnormal. Most users post only occasionally. Most of us only respond to top-level posts and rarely make any ourselves. But the prolific posters have an insane output rate. Many of them have an insane high-quality output rate. Because their output is so high, they tend to be able to dictate the general flow of ideas. In other words, they're the ones that form the core of the community. They're the ones that make most of the AAQC posts. They're the ones whose ideas people will recall and remember the most.
As many others have said, each time a prolific user is banned, you lose a small piece of the community. To maintain or grow a community, you need more such people to come in to fill in the gap. But these people, because they're so abnormal, are rare to come by. For the people who have been here a very, very long time, has the void been filled? As much as the vision and the rules help shape a place, it's ultimately the people that form a community.
Solutions - What should we do?
Having said all that, I do agree with the mod's vision that the rules are what have helped make the Motte into this unique space on the internet. I don't believe in making big sweeping changes to existing communities because once you make those big changes it's no longer the same community. I think people have mentioned how other offshoots from the culture war communities from the SSC days have failed to survive to the degree the Motte has. That indicates to me the rule does have value in them.
My proposal
Here's my modest proposal: Once a month (or longer, maybe twice a year) users on the forum are allowed to propose unbanning someone. Maybe limit who can make these proposals so not just anyone can propose and abuse the system. Then the community can vote to allow someone back in. If a certain threshold is met (for example 60%), then the user is unbanned. If for example, 90% of the community would rather want someone to keep posting even if they make the occasional inflammatory comment, should they deserve to be permanently banned? After all, they said were mean words, they didn't kill anyone, they didn't incite violence, they didn't harass people.
This is an extremely minor change that I think could be implemented. Maybe it's a dumb idea and won't result in anything. Maybe it'll make things worse. The person likely won't come back. But maybe it could be the start of stopping the motte from stagnating.
Of course, like I said, I'm naive in this. I don't really know the history, or the people who have come and gone. I can read and read about but I will never truly understand it. Some of you guys have been around this space for over a decade. Maybe all this has already been discussed and thought about and tried by people multiple times. But this community is still new and exciting stuff to me, and I wish I could get to experience even a little bit of that magic of the past. If I think this place is better than many other places online now, just how much better was the Motte in the past for people to lament the state it is in today?
Criticizing is easy. Pointing out problems is easy. Complaining is easy. Coming up with solutions is hard. Coming up with good solutions is almost impossible. I'm sure the mods have thought about this plenty, and people on the forum too, but I don't really see the full discussions. There's got to be at least 1 person in this place that would have a good idea.
Solutions from other people
Some other ideas I've seen other people propose:
- Just don't ban long-time high-quality posters. They get a free pass for being here so long and continuing to contribute to the community.
- Have a separate, no modding no rules thread.
- Stop (or minimize) tone policing. If there is an argument, in line with the tone policing, then that gets a free pass.
My dumb solutions
To help generate more discussion, I'm just going to throw whatever comes to my head here in this list, whether they are good or bad or feasible or not:
- If you get banned for inflammatory comments but have made good contributions before, you are limited to just posting top-level comments for a period of time, but you are not allowed to respond. If you break the rules to try to continue a previous conversation you get banned.
- If a conversation gets inflammatory it gets pushed into a black-box so nobody else can see it, or it auto collapses and you have to opt in to see it
- Allow users that would have been banned to keep communicating, but users must opt-in into an "I want to see everything" option and they no longer have the rights to request moderation once opted in. All conversations starting from these banned users and subsequent child posts get hidden unless you opt in.
- If you are banned, you must steelman your opposition point of view to an acceptable level to the person you were being antagonist against in order to get unbanned ahead of the ban timer
- Every 1 AAQC counters 1 bannable offense
- A converse to the community unban option - a decision of whether or not to ban of a prolific high-value contributor gets pushed to the community.
Let's have a discussion.
What do you, fellow Mottizens, think? I see a lot of complaining and only a few people have provided some ideas for a solution. This discussion about the moderation and state of this site has been popping up across multiple threads every week. How about the community actually get together and discuss the merits of actual proposed solutions, as well as provide their own solutions, instead of having fights with the mods every time someone gets moderated? Worst case scenario, at least all the discussion is now centralized for a place to reference for the future.
I’d like to start with a few disclaimers. This is not an anti-psychiatry post. This is also not the place to ask or receive advice about your mental health, or what nowadays is called “mental health”.
For some time now I’ve been feeling like I live in a different world than most people I know. It has come to a point where I have to face an awkward alternative: Either most people I know are wrong (including learned men and experts) or I am insane. As I don’t believe I have lost my sanity, and as I believe that I have very strong arguments to hold my ideas against all reasonable counterarguments; I think it’s about time I sit down and share my ideas more or less publicly. This is one of such ideas. What follows is the summary of my academic studies, my professional experience working in the field of mental health, my own personal thoughts, and the influence of several authors, chiefly Georges Canguilhem and Jacques Lacan.
The APA defines psychopathology as “the scientific study of mental disorders, including their theoretical underpinnings, etiology, progression, symptomatology, diagnosis, and treatment”. It is a jurisdiction of medicine, although that does not exclude other disciplines from delving into it as well. It is intrinsically linked to psychiatry, to the point where one cannot exist without the other. But psychiatry itself is a rather contradictory branch of medicine, because while every other specialization of medicine has built its own object of study by exploring a specific organ or function from the body, psychiatry exists only by virtue of that which it ignores. In its origins, psychiatry was born to deal with what has been classically classified as insanity, those people described by Descartes who believed they were made of glass or who fancied themselves to be pitches of water. These outlandish delusions have always caused turmoil in society because nobody really knows where they come from, what they mean and, most importantly, what to do with them. Insane people clearly need help but they do not want it, or what help they are willing to receive it’s impossible for other people to give. They break the law but they are not criminals, or at least they are bening. They behave like savages but are human beings and deserve to be treated as such.
Now enter the Enlightenment: Lady Reason triumphs all over the Western world, everything now has or will have a place and an explanation in the encyclopedia of universal knowledge. And what we understand we control. There are now a bunch of physicians who have little evidence but little doubt that these people are sick and that it is their task to heal them. And that they’ll try with all their available resources, but with little success. So while neurology developed from the study of the brain, cardiology from that of the heart and so on, psychiatry was born out of sheer embarrassment. It is the branch of medicine that studies mental disorders. However, being a part of modern scientific medicine, it cannot but assert that mental disorders can be explained by studying the body, the contradiction being that the day psychiatry discovers the bodily cause of mental disorders will be the day that it ceases to exist as a specialization of medicine, for said cause would fall under the jurisdiction of another specialization: If it’s in the brain then it would be neurology, if it’s in the genes it would be medical genetics, and if we were to discover a new organ in the body then a new specialization will be born to study it, leaving psychiatry in the past.
Therefore, psychiatry exists only because we do not know what mental disorders are. In fact, we don’t even know if the mind is real or not, much less whether it can get sick. What do we actually know then? We know that 1. there are people who need help, and 2. that there are means to help them. So it becomes a matter of administering a scarce resource. This is what psychopathology really is: It is not a science of mental pathology, it is the art of distributing psychiatric drugs and psychological treatments.
There used to be psychopathology. Classic psychiatrists wrote impressive treaties on the subject, with thousands of pages explaining in detail and classifying the behavior of their patients. The mountains really were in labour, alas, only a mouse was born: No progress was made regarding the causes, and most importantly the treatment of such behaviors. This last problem was drastically improved by the invention of psychopharmacology. Suddenly psychiatrists had a powerful tool to treat the symptoms of insanity, so even though they weren’t any close to understanding these symptoms, they changed their ideas on the subject to reflect the influence of psychiatric drugs. These influences can be accurately gauged by the changes on the DSM. The first DSMs included theories about the origin and nature of mental disorders, the last DSMs only mention the clinical symptoms necessary to prescribe a treatment. When a patient is diagnosed with depression the only relevant information that is learned is that said patient will start a treatment for depression.
So are mental disorders real? Of course they are. Whether they are mental or disorders, that’s another question. They are real because they are a set of behaviors that have been observed to occur together: Feelings of sadness, self-harming ideas or behaviors, inability to feel pleasure, these are all things that are real, observable, measurable, and treatable. But are these symptoms a mental problem? Are they a medical problem, or a problem at all? This is highly debatable, and in any case, not a solid foundation for a science.
If a person feels sad all the time, it is only natural for them to think that this life is not worth living. But the opposite is also true: If a person is convinced that there is nothing good in this world, then they will feel sad and hopeless all the time. So what comes first? Should we treat the sadness or the thoughts? And what if the person likes to feel sad, if they don’t want any help? Should we force them? And to make matters worse, it turns out that both psychiatric drugs and psychotherapy are effective*. And this is only to talk about those treatments that have empiric evidence to back them up and are approved by psychiatry, because, under the right circumstances, literally everything can be therapeutic: There’s horse therapy, art therapy, music therapy, dog therapy, video-game therapy, you name it.
There are some who believe in the demon deceptor, a person, or a group of people, who control our reality and make lies pass for truth, usually with malicious intent. These people believe that the pharmaceutical industry has created mental disorders only to sell drugs, and that psychologists and psychiatrists are their accomplices. For my part, I think it is overly optimistic to believe that someone has such a degree of control over the situation as to make it bend to their will. I believe that people are just confused, and with good reason, because being human is quite a bizarre experience. There are of course those who profit from the confusion of their fellow man, and prey on their ignorance. But even evil has its limits, and nobody can summon such perfect wickedness that no good may come of it. The truth is that for all the confusion that our idea of psychopathology entails, the treatment and the care for people with mental disorders has progressed a great deal in the last decades.
On the other hand there are the encyclopedists, who will argue that the fact that we haven’t discovered the bodily sources of mental disorders does not mean that we won’t succeed in the future. We have certainly made discoveries in this direction: Not only do we know now that it is impossible to be sad or mad without a brain, but we also know what specific brain part or substance is required. But even after all the advances in neurology, still no neurologic exam is indicated for the diagnoses of mental disorders, and for good reason. Because ultimately, what decides if someone has a mental disorder or not are arbitrary criteria. The fact that homosexuality is no longer a mental illness is only because of the fact that society has shifted its values towards the acceptance of diverse sexual orientations, were it not for that fact we would speak about the “homosexual brain” just as we know speak about “the depressed brain”. We could also speak about “the carpenter brain” or “the the writer’s brain”, and treat all of those conditions as illnesses.
In conclusion, I believe that contemporary psychopathology is a case of finding a hammer and suddenly realizing we are surrounded by nails. If something can be treated as an illness it will be treated as an illness, because that is l’esprit de l’époque. Classifying something as an illness, assigning it a part of the brain, and prescribing it a drug as treatment makes it real and important, so politicians, scientists, and the general public are aware of its existence and direct resources its way. This is why everyday we “discover” that there are more things linked to mental health: Poor housing, poor nourishment, the weather, sexual orientation, racial discrimination, political ideologies… and as there is no psychopathology there’s no limit to psychic pathologies. There’s a drug for everything or a therapy for everything. It’s no coincidence that we now have the most effective treatments in history and the highest rate of accessibility to mental health services ever, but the rates of mental disorders are soaring well. And despite all the advances in psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, no breakthroughs have been made in psychopathology.
I’m convinced that in the future people will look at our ideas on psychopathology as we now look at humorism.
Sources:
APA Definition of Psychopathology: https://dictionary.apa.org/psychopathology
*Psychotherapy just as effective as pharmacotherapy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5244449/
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-12-05 8:15PM Green Bay Packers @ Detroit Lions
Sun 2024-12-08 1:00PM Atlanta Falcons @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-12-08 1:00PM Carolina Panthers @ Philadelphia Eagles
Sun 2024-12-08 1:00PM Cleveland Browns @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Sun 2024-12-08 1:00PM Jacksonville Jaguars @ Tennessee Titans
Sun 2024-12-08 1:00PM New Orleans Saints @ New York Giants
Sun 2024-12-08 1:00PM New York Jets @ Miami Dolphins
Sun 2024-12-08 1:00PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Sun 2024-12-08 4:05PM Seattle Seahawks @ Arizona Cardinals
Sun 2024-12-08 4:25PM Buffalo Bills @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2024-12-08 4:25PM Chicago Bears @ San Francisco 49ers
Sun 2024-12-08 8:20PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Kansas City Chiefs
Mon 2024-12-09 8:15PM Cincinnati Bengals @ Dallas Cowboys
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-10-10 8:15PM San Francisco 49ers @ Seattle Seahawks
Sun 2024-10-13 9:30AM Jacksonville Jaguars @ Chicago Bears
Sun 2024-10-13 1:00PM Cleveland Browns @ Philadelphia Eagles
Sun 2024-10-13 1:00PM Indianapolis Colts @ Tennessee Titans
Sun 2024-10-13 1:00PM Arizona Cardinals @ Green Bay Packers
Sun 2024-10-13 1:00PM Houston Texans @ New England Patriots
Sun 2024-10-13 1:00PM Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ New Orleans Saints
Sun 2024-10-13 1:00PM Washington Commanders @ Baltimore Ravens
Sun 2024-10-13 4:05PM Pittsburgh Steelers @ Las Vegas Raiders
Sun 2024-10-13 4:05PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Denver Broncos
Sun 2024-10-13 4:25PM Atlanta Falcons @ Carolina Panthers
Sun 2024-10-13 4:25PM Detroit Lions @ Dallas Cowboys
Sun 2024-10-13 8:20PM Cincinnati Bengals @ New York Giants
Mon 2024-10-14 8:15PM Buffalo Bills @ New York Jets
Week 7 thread is live: https://www.themotte.org/post/1209/weekly-nfl-thread-week-7
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Sun 2024-09-29 1:00PM Cincinnati Bengals @ Carolina Panthers
Sun 2024-09-29 1:00PM Denver Broncos @ New York Jets
Sun 2024-09-29 1:00PM Jacksonville Jaguars @ Houston Texans
Sun 2024-09-29 1:00PM Minnesota Vikings @ Green Bay Packers
Sun 2024-09-29 1:00PM New Orleans Saints @ Atlanta Falcons
Sun 2024-09-29 1:00PM Philadelphia Eagles @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Sun 2024-09-29 1:00PM Pittsburgh Steelers @ Indianapolis Colts
Sun 2024-09-29 1:00PM Los Angeles Rams @ Chicago Bears
Sun 2024-09-29 4:05PM New England Patriots @ San Francisco 49ers
Sun 2024-09-29 4:05PM Washington Commanders @ Arizona Cardinals
Sun 2024-09-29 4:25PM Cleveland Browns @ Las Vegas Raiders
Sun 2024-09-29 4:25PM Kansas City Chiefs @ Los Angeles Chargers
Sun 2024-09-29 8:20PM Buffalo Bills @ Baltimore Ravens
Mon 2024-09-30 7:30PM Tennessee Titans @ Miami Dolphins
Mon 2024-09-30 8:15PM Seattle Seahawks @ Detroit Lions
The phrase "defensive alliance" is ambiguous. The rival meanings are not inherently incompatible. But in practise they tend in opposite directions. When the ambiguity is resolved some-one feels cheated.
To see the problem picture four countries, Timidland, Moralland, Weakland, and Aggroland. Timidland is spending more on defence than it wants to because it fears being attacked by Aggroland. Moralland is also spending more than it wants to on defence because it too fears attack by Aggroland. But the internal politics of Moralland are complicated. The moral thing to do is to build a larger army, attack Aggroland and liberate the people of Aggroland from the tyranny of the Chief Aggro. Or is that the moral thing to do? Isn't war bad?
Timidland and Moralland form an alliance. It is a "defensive alliance" meaning that Timidland will come to Moralland's aid if Aggroland attacks Moralland. But the people of Timidland are aware of the complicated internal politics of Moralland and it is explicit that if Moralland attacks Aggroland, then Moralland is on its own. Even instigating voids the alliance.
The problem arises because history isn't that neat. The 1914-1918 war starts with the Austro-Hungarian Empire giving an ultimatum to Serbia, Russia comes to Serbia's aid, Germany comes to Austria's aid, France and Britain have alliances to honour and end up fighting. If we want political theory to relate to the real world, we need to think about Moralland extending guarantees to Weakland.
Aggroland invades Weakland. Moralland supplies weapons to Weakland. And advisers. Eventually troops. Moralland artillery is shelling Aggroland invaders on Weakland soil from positions in Moralland. Counter battery fire from Aggrotroops in Weakland is hitting positions in Moralland. Does this trigger the defensive alliance and suck Timidland into the war?
Some Timidians argue that they never agreed to give guarantees to Weakland. Given the complicated history of the region, they would have refused to get involved if they had been asked. Others are saying that Moralland are the good guys. Of course Timidland must join the war. What use is a defensive alliance is you don't defend your allies? Peaceful Timidians feel that they have been out manoeuvred, and are being forced to honour guarantees to Weakland that they never made.
If Timidland is pulled into the war by the chains of the alliance, we can be more specific than calling it a defensive alliance. It was a "chaining alliance".
But what should we call a non-chaining alliance? I've picked the word "isolating". That is clearly wrong in theory. The terms of the alliance don't forbid Moralland from extending security guarantees to Weakland, they merely classify that as instigating; Moralland cannot call upon Timidland to help honour the guarantee.
But theory and practice disagree. The internal politics of Moralland has its guns-before-butter faction. They saw the alliance as a matter of building military strength, with a view to regime change in Aggroland, to save the world from the danger presented by the Chief Aggro. Moralland also has a butter-before-guns faction, that see the alliance as an opportunity to economise on defence spending, freeing up money for schools, hospitals, road, pensions, police, industrial policy, the climate emergency, tax cuts,... The list is endless. We see the likely outcome in Europe. NATO agrees that all members should spend at least 2% of GDP on defence. Most don't. The other priorities take precedence. In practice the non-chaining alliance leads to Moralland cutting defence spending. They are after all moral and pensioners deserve higher pensions, etc. The guns-before-butter faction are aghast to find that they have been out manoeuvred. They nearly had the army that they needed to protect Weakland from Aggroland. The alliance with Timidland was supposed to add to the army. In practise it subtracted. Moralland's own army has shrunk and Timidland's army is not available. The isolating alliance has left them isolated, unable to offer security guarantees to Weakland.
Obviously my fine distinction has contemporary resonances, but after World War Three reduces Europe and America to radioactive rubble, the run up to World War Four will involve China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Will they continue the tradition of talking about defensive alliances? Or will they embrace the distinction between chaining alliances and isolating alliances? I locate this essay in the British tradition of analytic philosophy, looking at words and attempting to resolve their ambiguities. Not all ambiguities; just those with large consequences.
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-12-19 8:15PM Cleveland Browns @ Cincinnati Bengals
Sat 2024-12-21 1:00PM Houston Texans @ Kansas City Chiefs
Sat 2024-12-21 4:30PM Pittsburgh Steelers @ Baltimore Ravens
Sun 2024-12-22 1:00PM Arizona Cardinals @ Carolina Panthers
Sun 2024-12-22 1:00PM Detroit Lions @ Chicago Bears
Sun 2024-12-22 1:00PM New England Patriots @ Buffalo Bills
Sun 2024-12-22 1:00PM New York Giants @ Atlanta Falcons
Sun 2024-12-22 1:00PM Tennessee Titans @ Indianapolis Colts
Sun 2024-12-22 1:00PM Philadelphia Eagles @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-12-22 1:00PM Los Angeles Rams @ New York Jets
Sun 2024-12-22 4:05PM Denver Broncos @ Los Angeles Chargers
Sun 2024-12-22 4:05PM Minnesota Vikings @ Seattle Seahawks
Sun 2024-12-22 4:25PM Jacksonville Jaguars @ Las Vegas Raiders
Sun 2024-12-22 4:25PM San Francisco 49ers @ Miami Dolphins
Sun 2024-12-22 8:20PM Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ Dallas Cowboys
Mon 2024-12-23 8:15PM New Orleans Saints @ Green Bay Packers
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 2024-11-28 12:30PM Chicago Bears @ Detroit Lions
Thu 2024-11-28 4:30PM New York Giants @ Dallas Cowboys
Thu 2024-11-28 8:20PM Miami Dolphins @ Green Bay Packers
Fri 2024-11-29 3:00PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Kansas City Chiefs
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Indianapolis Colts @ New England Patriots
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Arizona Cardinals @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Houston Texans @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Tennessee Titans @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Pittsburgh Steelers @ Cincinnati Bengals
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Atlanta Falcons
Sun 2024-12-01 1:00PM Seattle Seahawks @ New York Jets
Sun 2024-12-01 4:05PM Los Angeles Rams @ New Orleans Saints
Sun 2024-12-01 4:05PM Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ Carolina Panthers
Sun 2024-12-01 4:25PM Philadelphia Eagles @ Baltimore Ravens
Sun 2024-12-01 8:20PM San Francisco 49ers @ Buffalo Bills
Mon 2024-12-02 8:15PM Cleveland Browns @ Denver Broncos
Note: this post is about abstract and applied philosophy.
Value is that which people are drawn towards, and economically, which people are willing to trade other things of value for.
In Triessentialism, which I’ve described elsewhere, I’ve identified three four qualities of value, plus their opposites:
- Utility, which enables the pursuit of goals, and hassle, which impedes the pursuit of goals. Other writers attempting to quantify these have suggested measuring positive and negative “utils.”
- Enjoyment, the experience of having sensations and pseudo-sensations, and unpleasantness which is not enjoyed. Other writers attempting to quantify these have suggested measuring positive and negative “hedons”.
- Esteem, known in various cultures as status, honor, face, standing, etc., and disdain as a suggested general category for the negative. While some writers have lumped this in with hedons, I see esteem as something as different from experiences as magnetism is from gravity. Esteem, like magnetism, is polar; your esteem in your ingroup rises as it falls in your outgroup, and vice versa, someone beloved by your outgroup will be hated by your ingroup. This is obvious in the culture war, but less partisanly, with how punks and hippies reveled in being seen as weird or dangerous by upper and middle class society. I suggest measuring this in “estons.”
- Agency, the ability or authorization to cause or withhold action, and its opposite, constraint. People and mammals who do not feel their agency to choose will struggle against their constraints inversely to how inevitable or inescapable the constraint seems. I suggest measuring this in “freedons”.
I believe that the util/hedon dichotomy is an insufficient economic model of the world, and that Triessentialism’s util/hedon/eston/freedon model can rehabilitate the increasingly creaky Homo economicus idea.
As to their Triessentiality:
- Utility is the How, the Logical aspect of value
- Enjoyment is the What, the Physical aspect of value
- Esteem is the Why, the Emotional aspect of value
- Agency is the Moral aspect of value, at the center of the triple-circle Venn diagram of What, How, and Why.
These fundamental categories and the Venn nature of Triessentialism suggests three additional constructed categories of value as the junctions of What/How, How/Why, and Why/What.
note: I have edited this since posting. “Agency” replaces the earlier weaker word “choice”, and at the suggestion of Bing chat, “Enjoyment” replaces the clinical “experiences”. I have also reclassified the What and Why at the end.
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Thu 8:15PM Buffalo Bills @ Miami Dolphins
Sun 1:00PM Cleveland Browns @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 1:00PM Indianapolis Colts @ Green Bay Packers
Sun 1:00PM New Orleans Saints @ Dallas Cowboys
Sun 1:00PM New York Giants @ Washington Commanders
Sun 1:00PM New York Jets @ Tennessee Titans
Sun 1:00PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Baltimore Ravens
Sun 1:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Carolina Panthers
Sun 1:00PM Seattle Seahawks @ New England Patriots
Sun 1:00PM San Francisco 49ers @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 1:00PM Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ Detroit Lions
Sun 4:05PM Los Angeles Rams @ Arizona Cardinals
Sun 4:25PM Cincinnati Bengals @ Kansas City Chiefs
Sun 4:25PM Pittsburgh Steelers @ Denver Broncos
Sun 8:20PM Chicago Bears @ Houston Texans
Mon 8:15PM Atlanta Falcons @ Philadelphia Eagles
Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule, all times Eastern, is the final week of the regular season.
The next post will be a single, post-season thread that'll include discussions about the playoffs and the Super Bowl.
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Buffalo Bills @ New England Patriots
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Carolina Panthers @ Atlanta Falcons
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Chicago Bears @ Green Bay Packers
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Cincinnati Bengals @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Cleveland Browns @ Baltimore Ravens
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Houston Texans @ Tennessee Titans
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Jacksonville Jaguars @ Indianapolis Colts
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Kansas City Chiefs @ Denver Broncos
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Miami Dolphins @ New York Jets
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Minnesota Vikings @ Detroit Lions
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM New Orleans Saints @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM New York Giants @ Philadelphia Eagles
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Las Vegas Raiders
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Seattle Seahawks @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM San Francisco 49ers @ Arizona Cardinals
Sun 2025-01-05 1:00PM Washington Commanders @ Dallas Cowboys
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.